Tell Me Something, a book published by the New York-based production and media company Film First, brought together 60 documentary filmmakers from around the world, and asked each of them for one piece of advice. Funded by crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter and conceived and edited by Jessica Edwards, a Torontonian currently based in New York, the book shares insights into the how and why of doc-making from masters such as Errol Morris, Martin Scorsese and Michael Moore, with – and maybe no surprise here – recurring themes of persistance, rejection and inspiration. But as the four entries excerpted here show, the secrets shared apply to much more than life behind the camera.

Jessica Sample

Brett Morgan

I couldn’t speak until I was 5 because of a severe speech impediment. I had
to stay in speech therapy until I was 16. I’ve been told that most kids with
speech problems tend to be shy and quiet. But I must have realized, at that
young age, that my voice really did sound funny, and I could use it to my
advantage. … If I made fun of myself first, it kind of took the piss out of it for other kids. So at an early age,
I realized the value of entertaining an audience.

I often find the truth to be overrated. I’d rather have a drink with a really
good storyteller than with someone who sticks to the record. When I think of my
films, they’re not that different. I don’t really document the truth, I
manufacture it.

I try to go to the cinema at least three times a week. Same reason. Reality
is never as entertaining as a movie.

My favourite line from a film is, “When the legend becomes fact, print the
legend.” These are words to live by. Create your own mythology. Maybe I didn’t
have a speech problem – maybe I just made it up to make a point.

Sally Montana

Shola Lynch

I never set out to be a filmmaker. … In 1996, after struggling to find jobs
in my field, I stumbled on a chance to work for the award-winning filmmaker Ken
Burns. The four-year job became my graduate film school. About halfway through
it, the most valuable lesson came unexpectedly, as I waited for the copy
machine. A senior producer, Lynn Novick, had
just put a large document in the feeder. Married with toddlers, she had great
focus at work, so this was a rare moment to chat. Instead, as the machine
clicked and copied, she said out loud but half to herself, “I wish someone had
told me that you can have it all; you just can’t have it all at the same time.”
… Although I was dismissive at the time, smiling politely and wishing she’d
hurry up with the machine, what she said stuck with me.

The other piece of advice came years later while I was directing my first
documentary, Chisholm ‘72:Unbought & Unbossed (2004), about Congresswoman Shirley
Chisholm’s run for the Democratic nomination for president in 1972. I was
driving Mrs. Chisholm home after a long interview day when she leaned closer to
me and said, “So, young lady …” I braced myself for some deep political insight.
… Instead, Mrs. Chisholm asked me a question – a dreaded one for a single woman
in her 30s: “Do you have someone special in your life?” … I mumbled something
about being busy – working on a film about her. She shook her head with firm
disapproval and said, “It is important to take care of yourself.” With a finger
wag and a slight chuckle she added, “Men always do.” Like any good teacher, she
completely shifted my thinking. …

Both pieces of advice became relevant when I was making Free Angela &
All Political Prisoners … Raising the budget turned out to be an eight-year
Herculean task. During one of many points when I was stalled, I revisited
Chisholm’s advice. I made time for a personal life, and before I knew it, I was
married with two kids. That is when Lynn’s words
clicked. I could not have it all at once; I had to concentrate on one aspect of
my life at a time. My fix became to rotate my priorities: Free Angela,
for-hire producing work (to make some kind of living) and a family. Like a
juggler, I kept each priority in play to focus on whatever needed my attention
most. … When I inevitably dropped all the balls, I picked them up without too
much judgment, learned what I could, and kept it moving. And do you know what? I
finished Free Angela, my kids thrived, and I survived. The big lesson I
learned was, for my ultimate productivity, I needed to be happy.

Jodie Vicenta Jacobson

Steve James

That was a favourite quote of my scary, crazy high-school basketball coach,
usually delivered at 120 decibels and accompanied by a foot-stomping tirade. But
there is truth in it that applies to documentary filmmaking, and – hard as it is to admit given how
laughable I found my coach back then – okay, it applies to life itself.

My favourite documentaries I’ve made have come from experiences where I have
been plunged into dramatic circumstances and people’s lives at important
junctures. And whatever artistic or thematic pretensions I had going in were
summarily swept aside by all that is surprising, bedeviling, inspiring, hilarious and unbelievably
sad about the human condition. When you’re capturing an unfolding story where
the stakes, whatever they are – dreams, prison, love, a job, life and death –
are high, it’s truly like living inside a novel come to life. The raw material
(ingredients) will dictate the form (salad or shit) if you listen to it.

Here’s an example: I made a film in which, near the end, a young man was
headed off to prison and we were there to film his last morning of freedom. I’d
expected his grandmother, who had raised him, to latch on to him and wail. She
didn’t. I’d expected the young man to pitch a fit at how fate had cursed him. He
didn’t. I’d expected everyone around the kitchen table to give him advice about
how to stay safe in prison. They didn’t. Instead, everyone sat quietly, stunned,
for a good long while, and then talked about the dog lying on the kitchen floor.
How the dog was really good and not bad like people believed him to be. How that
dog “could look at you mean, but he’d never hurt a soul.” In other words, they
were talking about the young man in the only way they could without falling
apart.

I felt like I was witnessing the kind of moving and completely unexpected
moment that no playwright or screenwriter could have come up with. And so I
didn’t try to impose my original ideas and expectations on material that wanted
to be something else. I embraced what is. And, not to go all Oprah, but what
excellent advice for life: Embrace what’s in front of you instead of looking to
validate all your preconceived notions. Find the deeper truth and inspiration in
what is, and just maybe life won’t be a shit sandwich.

Johannes Kroemer

Judith Helfand

“No” can turn around with patience, serenity and acceptance – sooner or
later. If it doesn’t, you have been saved from something you don’t need to be
focusing on, and now have time for the thing in front of your face – the door
that wants you to open it.

My mother did not ever read me a bedtime issue, she read me a bedtime story.
I tell myself this when I am in the field. “Make this film as if it is a
story.”

When everyone runs to the other side of the boat to watch the whale, stay on
the side that no one is on. It’s quiet, empty, tipped over by the weight of all
those on the “right” side. You will see something utterly unique. It could be
the “other whale” no one is looking at. It could be the calm sea, it could be a
chance to catch your breath and just listen. And there you will find the “other
side” of the story, the fish no one knows about.

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